The decision will be closely studied by other countries that still have citizens held in camps in north-east Syria, including the UK. The Strasbourg-based court – which is not a European Union body – ruled that Paris must quickly review requests by the parents of the two women to be allowed to return to France with the children they gave birth to in Syria. The judges found that France’s refusal to repatriate the women and children violated a person’s right to “enter the territory of the State of which he is a national”. The ruling did not provide a blanket right of repatriation, but said there should be safeguards against any potentially “arbitrary” decision-making. He said an independent body should be able to review decisions made about individuals. France had not submitted sufficient reviews to ensure that its refusal to repatriate was not arbitrary. France must now review the cases of women and their children and provide guarantees for the decision-making process. The families of the two French women had argued that their prolonged detention in Syria exposed them and their children to inhuman and degrading treatment and violated their right to respect for family life. The two women had left France for Syria in 2014 and 2015 when they were in their 20s. Now in their 30s, one has two children, aged eight and six, and the other a three-year-old. They had lived in IS territory where they were captured in 2019 and are believed to have been held with their children since then in detention in Syria, in camps including those in al-Hawl and al-Roj. The parents who filed a case to be returned to France had said malnutrition and disease were rife in the camps. Human rights watchdogs have warned that in the camps, people face hunger, thirst, poor sanitation, inadequate housing and the threat of violence and exploitation. A father who had filed a case for his daughter told France Inter radio: “I am relieved, because it was a three-year struggle.” He said it was remarkable that the case had to go all the way to the ECtHR. He said of his daughter and grandson at the camp: “I hope they don’t spend another winter there.” France, which has seen more of its citizens join IS in Syria than any other European country and has suffered a series of deadly terror attacks since 2015 that have killed more than 250 people, has for years resisted calls from rights groups to repatriation of runaway women. to join IS. France considered them “combatants” to be tried where they were accused of committing crimes. Paris had argued that citizens who joined jihadist networks in Syria and Iraq would pose security risks if they returned home. France initially implemented a case-by-case policy of returning children to France without their mothers. But in recent months, Paris has changed its approach. In July, Paris moved to repatriate 16 women and 35 children, some of them orphans, on chartered planes. On arrival in France, eight women were detained for questioning and the other eight were held on arrest warrants. The children were placed in the care of social services. Reacting to Wednesday’s Strasbourg decision, government spokesman Olivier Véran cited repatriations this summer, saying France was “not waiting for the European court’s decision” to “move on” and that each case would be examined “thoroughly”. It is estimated that there are still around 100 French women and 250 children in Syrian prison camps. It emerged this week that those repatriated in July include the widow of one of the attackers at the Bataclan concert venue in Paris in November 2015, where 90 people were killed at a rock concert. The woman was accused of collaborating with terrorists. Most of the women and children in the camps were captured by Syrian Kurdish fighters, ground troops in the US-led coalition against the terror group, when they fled IS territory after the fall of Baghuz in 2019. The UK has also faced pressure from MPs and human rights groups to repatriate women and children from Syrian camps. So far, the UK has repatriated some children from the camps, but no women. An estimated 15 to 20 people and their families who originally came from Britain are among those held in north-east Syria, including some who have been stripped of their citizenship. Britain continues to argue that women are a threat to national security. In the case of some, including Shamima Begum, who left London aged 15 with two school friends, the government stripped them of their UK citizenship. Other European countries such as Belgium and Germany have recovered most of their citizens who fled to join the jihadist fight in Syria.
